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now the unknown keys are form fields with corresponding database columns... but how to i find out what's happening here? i have yet to acquire enough experience with this framework to be able to reliably read the application trace AND know what it means.

Can anyone here help or point me in the right direction? my controller action:

and i've read up about assert_valid_keys, the only thing i can find is that maybe my keys are getting turned into strings, i mean is rails thinking that ("page"=>{"content"=>) is two strings? why/how is this happening? i'm not doing it... can't be MY fault. ... can it?

your brain reacts in the same way whether you are
looking at something or thinking about it...

I am still very new to Rails, so I may not be much help. I too have trouble harvesting useful information from traces, although once in a while I spot something among the mess that helps point me in the right direction.

I find it much easier to debug by using
rake test:units
rake test:functionals
rake test:integration
Have you tried them? IMHO, the information is much more helpful.

Another place to look is in the logs. Almost as bewildering as the traces, but they usually contain more hints in them (parameters, sql queries, rendering, etc.)

EDIT: This may be of help. I installed the "ruby-debug" gem and checked it out a bit. It lets you step through the code, set breakpoints, and inspect values through the console. My prior bebugging experience consists mainly of using echo() and alert() (PHP and javascript) so it's a bit overwhelming to me at present, but if you have experience with this kind of tool you may like it. It can be integrated with the TextMate editor too if you're used to using that.